Amala Groom | aeternum imperium | 2020 | glass, metal, spray paint, rainwater, red velvet, 18 x 14 x 14cm x 13
image courtesy of Amala Groom

As a triple entendre, aeternum imperium is a conceptual intervention into Chambord’s use of Catholic iconography that formerly represented the bestowing of Colonial power to reign supreme over First Peoples by so called divine right.

In questioning the legal authority of the Colonial Project, this work repurposes a vintage Chambord bottle by replacing the original text, Royal Deluxe Chambord Liquor, with Eternal Reign, and replacing the alcohol content with the first rain of the season after the Black Summer of early 2020.

The design of the Chambord bottle is modelled after the Globus Cruciger (cross-bearing orb), or The Sovereign’s Orb, a piece of British coronation regalia. A symbol of godly power, the orb is depicted throughout art history most notably in Leonardo Da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi (Saviour of the World, c.1500) and represents the celestial sphere of the heavens, also known as Aether, or as the fifth element in alchemical studies.

Traversing language groups, rainwater is used in Aboriginal ceremonial business, in the connection of ancestors to country, literally bringing the heavens to earth.

The title is borrowed from Latin, calling into account the legal fictions of the series of Papal Bulls decreed, with Papal Bull Terra Nullius in 1095 and The Bulls of Donation in 1493, which constitute the legal and quasi-legal underpinning of Iberian and western European expansion.

aeternum imperium posits that true sovereignty transcends the physical plane and that it is fictitious for any single person to hold the world in one’s hand. It further declares that reign, meaning to hold royal office; lasting or existing forever, without end; and a supreme ruler is colonial mythology. Actual dominion is held within First Peoples’ unbroken connection to the multiverse reigning supreme.